Sweet, sweet cool

I have spent a lot of time complaining about the weather and you have all felt very pleased with yourselves for not having moved here. Well, this is the second day that we have been perfectly cool and there is actual water falling from the sky. I tried to take a good photo of the rain but was wholly unsuccessful. It was raining quite heavily when I took the above photo. If you are ridiculously observant you will have noticed that in photos of the back garden that I have posted previously, there was one of those portable pergola things. On Thursday night, long after Andrew and Jossie had left for Sydney, the heat was blown away. It was so windy that I thought I'd have a look out the back...... no pergola. It was upside down in the garden next door. It was much too big for me to carry by myself and I really wasn't sure what to do! The house next door is a rental, and while there was a car in the driveway, there were no lights on. I ignored it for a little while but when I looked again it was at the other end of their garden, about to jump the fence and float all over the suburb. So, I snuck into their garden and dismantled the whole thing in the dark and dragged it all back home. I consider it worth it, however, to have this cool weather. Its so cool that our antiquated cooling is off completely, see?

Our friends Steve and Jane are off to Bible college this year, and Steve just turned 30 so they had a party last night at the Wilsons'. They were counting on it being fine, of course, and not unreasonably, rain is very rare. 100 people, inside. We got there when it started at 5.30 and by 6.30 you could hardly move. Bethany was tired and climbing all over me so we went home! Toby was most upset that he hadn't had dessert yet. Dessert? We hadn't had dinner! Actually, we all ate at least a meal's worth of nibbles so I gave Toby and Bethany some ice cream as a treat when we got home, and put Bethany to bed. Toby played his new wiggle giggle game.

To make up for my own disappointment I finished making the vanilla ice cream I started on Thursday night (Nigella's real vanilla ice cream with yummy black specks) and made a jumbleberry crumble to go with it! Nigella says that jumbleberry is an old English term for which ever mixture of berries you use to make jams, pudding or jellies.

Today Toby, Bethany and I are home all day listening to the rain. We are going to make Nigella's rainy day biscuits. I'll share photos tomorrow!